Tuesday, 13 November 2012

A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment

I just had to share this. The night before last, I was feeling pretty fretful in the small hours with joint pains from the chemotherapy, so eventually gave in and took a couple of co-codamols (what they call "Tylenol 1" in the USA). They clearly worked, because I woke up around 3pm - but with vague recollections of an interminable dream of being at a pub quiz for hours on end. I remember two of the questions:

In what sport is the Leaping Grand Cheval tackle permitted?

On what classical symphony is the song "The Elephant's Covered in Skin" based?

The weirdness of it is that it implies there are sports where it's not permitted.

It rather reminds me of the (alleged) wrestling moves in RA Lafferty's Odyssey retelling Space Chantey, in which the hero is wrestling in a carnival challenge against a character who turns out to be Atlas: the "Samoyed sledge", the "double caboose", the "double bull-whack", the "down-under dingo-trip", the "three-jaw cruncher", and so on.